The Ethics Hearing Board meeting concerning Luke Ravenstahl and the charity golf tournament was pushed back to Tuesday, August 21, for some obviously nefarious reason (P-G).##
The Penguins are delaying the opening of their new arena until the 2010-11 season (P-G).
He said the additional time would allow the Penguins to check out more arenas for ideas and continue to participate in the process set up by the city to get public comment on the project and the development expected to take place around it.
Again, obviously nefarious.
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So long as the Commonwealth does not enact a very muscular smoking ban, Don Barden will allow smoking in his casino. Rebecca Flora of the Green Building Alliance seemed to go kind of easy on him. (P-G)
Ms. Flora acknowledged the casino had incorporated green building techniques into the design but said she was saddened it chose "not to go that extra step" toward LEED certification.
"I think his design team is doing a good job integrating a variety of green building technologies. Unfortunately for us, if he's not going for LEED certification, particularly with a building of this scale, it's hard for me to validate it as a green building."
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The computerization of police cars for the purposes of automated and expedited reporting sounds great (P-G), but ...
The city also is exploring a possible network of security video cameras that officers could access from their mobile computers.
Look us the eye and tell us this is not going to be used primarily for ogling women -- and occasionally for tracking young black men with Starter jackets until they do something suspicious looking.
The thing about the delay of the ethics board meeting is that I worry that if they had gone forward with August 10th, none of the board would have shown up or something. In other words, I take the PG story at face value. Still, it also worries me that an assistant city solicitor "staffs" the ethics board. Can't the city even pretend to make the board independent?
ReplyDeleteThere is far too much hand-holding between the ethics board and the law department. One of the board members is an attorney - although, she appears to be the member who is conveniently unavailable at critical junctures (failed to appear for meeting to determine board chair, didn't appear to be present for the hearing where this latest ethics debacle was discussed - or had absolutely no opinion on the matter) - while the city's lawyers represent more than just the mayor, when it comes to things like the ethics board, there really should be some effort to draw a line that does not give the appearance that the board is simply dancing to the tune of the law department - particularly in this administration, where independent thinking by lawyers is forbidden.
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